


Left My Shoes in the Street So You'd Carry Me

by firbolg_boyfriends



Series: A Study in Useless Lesbianism [1]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Awkward Flirting, F/F, Meet-Cute, Minor Fjord/Caduceus Clay, Minor Mollymauk Tealeaf/Caleb Widogast, Multi, Trans Jester Lavorre, Yasha is not there but she's mentioned, beau and molly act like siblings, caduceus is the campus weird guy, caleb and beau met because they're both history majors, feels good feels organic, fjord and beau are pizza coworkers, lighthearted content with only a teeny bit of angst, like real gay, listen this is just... really gay, molly and beau are roommates and best friends from high school, molly's a theater major and he also works at the queer center, takes place in seattle and you can probably tell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-08
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-01-25 12:40:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 16,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21356407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firbolg_boyfriends/pseuds/firbolg_boyfriends
Summary: Beau and Jester are fellow college students whose paths happen to cross one day. They each think the other one is pretty freakin' great, but can they get over themselves enough to make a move?
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett & Caleb Widogast, Beauregard Lionett & Mollymauk Tealeaf, Caduceus Clay & Jester Lavorre, Fjord & Beauregard Lionett, Jester Lavorre & Nott, Jester Lavorre/Beauregard Lionett, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Series: A Study in Useless Lesbianism [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1586083
Comments: 88
Kudos: 218





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi friends! <3 I'm currently working on another cr fic but I felt like adding this one to the mix because I love beaujes very much. Both fics will still be updated about once a week! Hope you enjoy!

“No one ever sees you in anything but your gym clothes or that ugly orange apron,” Molly remarked to Beau, just like he did at least once a week. “I’m embarrassed to be known as your roommate. Moreover, how can you possibly expect to get any girls that way?”

Beau was the type of lesbian who lifted weights, but she wasn’t the type of lesbian who lifted weights early in the morning. She was more inclined to wake up hours after the sun had risen and wear her tank top, hoodie, and running shoes to class so she could head to the campus gym afterwards and not need to change, and then she’d bring her work uniform in her duffel bag so she could go straight to her evening shift at Payaso Pizza. It was more efficient that way. But there was no point in trying to reason with Molly in terms of efficiency; logic was a foreign concept to him.

“There aren’t any girls at the gym,” Beau retorted, flipping him off for good measure as she neatly folded her Payaso employee polo. It had a stupid little embroidered pizza slice over the heart, right where fancier polo shirts typically sported designer logos.

Molly gave her a Look. “That is patently untrue.”

“I mean there aren’t any girls I’m, like, into. You knew what I meant, you’re just being deliberately difficult, like usual.” She stuffed the polo shirt in her gym bag, largely rendering her neat folding completely pointless. “Besides, how would you know? Have you ever even been to the campus gym?”

“You know I haven’t, dearest roomie. I’m a theater kid, remember? I get all my exercise playing needlessly complicated improv games and drunkenly making out with my castmates.” He popped a grape in his mouth. He was currently eating an entire bunch of grapes like he was in some kind of bacchanalian Renaissance painting. And he was even lounging luxuriously across three slightly mismatched chairs at the kitchen table; one to support most of his body, and the other two to rest his long legs. Which were currently mostly bare, because even though it was nearly two pm he was still clad in his sleepwear, which consisted of boxers that read “Wednesday is hump day” (today was Monday) and one of Beau’s old high school Knowledge Bowl T-shirts, which he’d blatantly stolen. “We went to the same high school so I have a right to wear it,” had been his argument the last time she’d tried to call him out on his crimes. “You’re not smart enough to be on Knowledge Bowl so it’s false advertising,” she’d replied, and then he’d retaliated by eating all the Taiwanese takeout she’d been saving in the fridge.

“Are you aware that you’re the worst person in the entire universe?” she asked him.

“Takes one to know one,” he sing-songed. “Have fun not attracting any girls.”

“Have fun not attracting literally anyone of any conceivable gender,” she snapped as she laced up her sneakers.

“I’m not even going to dignify that with a response because we both know you’re dead wrong,” she heard him call out as she headed outside into the steel-gray winter air. As she shut the door, her phone pinged with a text from him. ‘You forgot to wash your face,’ it read.

“Fuck you!” she yelled loud enough for him to hear inside the apartment, and then immediately felt slightly guilty because they had neighbors.

She huffed a soft laugh as she pounded down the concrete-and-metal stairs of their apartment complex. Begrudgingly, she thought to herself that maybe Molly sort of had a point. Attractiveness wasn’t about what clothes you wore, because you could wear anything and be attractive. It was more about the sort of energy you were projecting through your fashion choices, and she had to admit that wearing the same pair of track pants for a week or more at a time and tying her hair up in a bun when it really just needed to be washed didn’t exactly convey a message of “I am confident, put-together, and prepared for romantic love”.

At the very least, she wished she’d listened to Molly’s more immediate advice about improving her personal hygiene. Today she didn’t have any classes so she was going directly to the gym before work, so there was even less incentive to make herself look presentable. However, even though she hadn’t been lying that morning when she said she wasn’t interested in any girls at the gym, she had a feeling that wasn’t going to be true for much longer. It appeared that the front desk had hired a new receptionist. A very cute blue-haired receptionist with lots of ear piercings.

Before fully entering the gym lobby, Beau took a moment to collect herself. Okay, so she hadn’t washed her face that morning, and she’d sprayed aerosol deodorant on yesterday’s sports bra instead of laundering it, and it had started raining lightly on her walk along the tree-lined city bike trail that led between her neighborhood and the outskirts of the university campus so her hair was flat and sticking to her temples. Dammit, she really needed to pull her shit together. To be fair, the rain thing wasn’t technically her fault, but she could’ve brought an umbrella with her, which would have been a smart choice considering she lived in a chronically rainy city. She could’ve borrowed one of Molly’s; he owned several quirky novelty umbrellas because he liked to shop online whenever he got too stressed about school. One of them was clear with little decals of legendary Pokémon on it. Why didn’t she listen to Molly more? Then she remembered that when they were in high school he’d made her drive him halfway across the state to pick up an “authentic” vintage Ouija board he’d ordered on eBay so he could summon a poltergeist to haunt their English teacher because she’d called his assessment of The Great Gatsby “myopic” – prompting Beau to make fun of him for months for not knowing what meant “myopic” meant, until she finally admitted to him that she didn’t know what it meant, either. Maybe they both needed to pull their shit together. Also, it had been four years and he still hadn’t paid her back for gas.

“Hello! Can I help you?” the receptionist yelled brightly, even though Beau hadn’t actually entered yet. Maybe she was bored; there weren’t any other people in the lobby at the moment. Although when Beau was working at Payaso Pizza and there weren’t many customers around, she entertained herself by arguing with her coworker Fjord about what music they should play over the speakers (he kept sneaking Jimmy Buffett songs into the queue while she was busy at the register).

“Ah, yeah, thanks,” Beau said awkwardly as she approached the desk, adjusting her gym bag to the other shoulder. Dammit, the receptionist was even prettier up close. She was just wearing the purple university T-shirt that all the employees wore, but she’d accessorized it with a detachable lace collar, which Beau found strangely endearing. She had enormous, sparkling gemstone eyes and a wide, warm smile that made her cheeks round like apples. And she smelled good, like vanilla or butterscotch or something. Her messy bangs fell over her dark eyebrows, dusting her long eyelashes; when she tucked her short hair behind her studded ears, Beau saw that all of her fingernails were painted different colors from each other, and she had a tiny seashell tattoo on one wrist. Okay, so every little detail about her was exquisite and appealing. Beau wasn’t sure exactly what message her fashion choices were projecting, but it said something about self-expression and authenticity and joy.

“My name is Jester, by the way!” she said, tapping her nametag. She’d apparently used a metallic gold Sharpie to draw little hearts around her name, which was probably a violation of university policy or something. Beau also noticed that she spoke with some kind of Slavic accent, which reminded her of Yasha, the exchange student who’d lived with Molly in high school and who’d been responsible for a lot of soul-searching about Beau’s sexuality. In short, she maybe had a weakness for Eastern European gals. Dammit, Part 3.

“That’s, uh, a great name,” Beau replied, hoping she didn’t sound too gruff. Molly told her she had Resting Bitch Voice.

“Thanks! I picked it myself!” she replied. She smiled at Beau expectantly. Oh, she was probably waiting for Beau to say her own name.

“Oh, yeah, uh… I’m Beau…” she said, pulling her student ID out of her pocket. She tried to scan it but she pulled it away too fast and it didn’t take. She tried again. This time it wasn’t quite centered on the machine. Jester watched Beau struggle, looking like she was holding in a giggle.

“Guess those arm muscles don’t help you much with fine motor skills, huh Beau?” she teased.

“My – oh. Yeah, I guess,” Beau muttered, feeling very glad she’d worn her sleeveless hoodie despite the cold. Could Jester be flirting? She didn’t want to get her hopes up too much. Sometimes straight girls commented on her biceps, usually as a way to lead into asking her to open a bottle of kombucha for them or something.

“Lucky for you, I have excellent fine motor skills. I’m an art major.” Jester wiggled her fingers.

Beau gave her a once-over, taking in the indigo hair dye and the space buns on top of her head and the ostentatious silver chain hanging between two piercings on the same ear. Yeah, she could’ve guessed art major. “I guess we balance out, then.”

“Well, sort of. I also have great arm muscles.” Jester pulled back one sleeve and flexed her own bicep. Okay, so she was surprisingly strong. That was… information to file away for a later time. Maybe when was alone in a public bathroom and could have a Gay Meltdown in peace and solitude.

Beau didn’t remember exactly how she reacted to that. She probably said something stupid like “Wow! See ya!” before running away because she’d realized her card had finally successfully scanned while she’d been distracted by the hot receptionist.

Once she was safely in the weight room, she took a moment to sit down on one of the benches and lose her mind a little bit. Then she began mentally debating whether it was worth it to text Molly about Jester. She knew he would tease her relentlessly, but they also had this mystical compulsion to overshare about their lives with each other, and she was fully aware he’d probably figure it out somehow anyway even if she didn’t tell him. She sighed heavily.

‘So I met this girl,’ she typed out.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok lol so when I said this fic will be updated every week, I more meant "It will be updated at seemingly random times but no more than a week will go by between updates" (same goes for TFWMATW if you're following that one!)

Caduceus was one of Jester’s closest friends, but even she wasn’t entirely sure how old he was or what he studied or if he was even really a student. He looked mature enough to be in grad school, but people with beards also tended to look mature no matter how old they actually were, especially if they were almost seven feet tall and wore rimless glasses and somehow gave off the vibe that they knew how to spin wool. Jester was pretty sure that Caduceus truly did know how to spin wool; one of the few facts about himself he’d confirmed was that he’d grown up on some kind of farm commune in the San Juan Islands where he had, like, three moms and way too many siblings and earned money selling artisanal soaps to rich vegans.

One of their other products was homemade medicinal tea, which was one of the major benefits of being Caduceus’s friend. Jester’s breasts were still growing in and on some days they were so sore that the only thing she wanted was to wrap herself in blankets and not move for hours, but all she had to do was email Caduceus and he would come by her dorm with a hot water bottle and some kind of mysterious herbal concoction that he’d made himself. (He didn’t have a phone or a laptop so he stayed in touch with people by emailing them on the computers in the school library. He also still had an AOL account for some reason.)

Jester’s roommate Nott had also ended up becoming friends with them by virtue of the fact that she was always around when Caduceus visited. Nott was a chemistry major, but she was the kind of heathen chemistry major who didn’t show up to lecture all quarter except when there was an in-class exam. For her, “going to class” was more of a theoretical concept that actually meant doing the online quizzes in her dorm room instead of on campus. She and Jester had been randomly assigned a double room together, but they’d hit it off fairly quickly because they were both a little weird and unintentionally kind of nosy and so they ended up learning a lot of intimate details about each other’s personalities very quickly. Some roommates had an unwritten mutual agreement to just not say anything about each other’s quirks, but Jester and Nott had an unwritten mutual agreement to say a lot about each other’s quirks so that it would balance out. Jester was allowed to ask about Nott’s plastic bins of small useless items she’d found on the sidewalk, for example, because Nott was allowed to ask about Jester’s nearly-life-size poster of Princess Leia. (“I just think she’s neat,” Jester had said.)

The afternoons when Caduceus came to visit had gradually morphed into a sort of unofficial verbal processing slash debriefing session for the three of them. Nott talked about the MMORPG’s she was playing and the horror movies she was watching and the weird sticks she’d found on the ground lately and her best friend Caleb, and Caduceus talked about the moon and the trees and the flowers and the stars, and Jester talked about, well, everything.

“This really pretty girl came by the gym yesterday,” she remarked as she lay on her bed with Caduceus’s hot water bottle on her chest. It was a chilly, gray winter afternoon, but they’d lit some candles and turned on Jester’s twinkle lights, so the room felt very cozy and warm. It helped that Jester’s bed was outfitted with a fortune’s worth of plush blankets and super-soft throw pillows from Ikea.

“You think every girl is pretty. I’ve never even heard you refer to a girl without mentioning that she’s pretty,” Nott pointed out from her swivel chair on the other side of the room.

“It’s because they are,” Jester replied. “But this one was, like, extra pretty! She was really tall, with, like, brown hair and blue eyes, and an undercut –”

“Did you get her phone number?” Nott asked.

“No, because I was at work and it probably would have been weird. Besides, I think she’s too cool for me anyway. She was, like, super tough and badass looking.”

“Sometimes people look tough but they’re actually not,” Caduceus commented.

“I guess that’s true,” Jester relented. “But she’s still probably out of my league.”

“What does it mean to be in or out of someone’s league, anyway?” Nott asked, idly spinning around in her swivel chair.

Caduceus took a sip of his chamomile tea. “I think it means you should only date people who play the same sports as you.”

Jester propped herself up on her elbows. “No, it’s more like, you should only date people who are as good at sports as you are.”

“What if you don’t play sports at all?” Nott wondered. All three of them were silent for a moment as they considered it.

“I think people can still date even if they don’t play sports…” Caduceus said, sounding vaguely uncertain.

“Do you play any sports?” Nott asked him.

This led into Caduceus telling them about the goat racing competitions on the island where he grew up, which led into a debate about whether something counted as a sport if your goat was doing most of the work instead of you, which led into an impassioned discussion about how much Nott and Jester wanted a pet goat.

“Caleb has a pet cat but it doesn’t like me very much so it’s not very fun to visit,” Nott said, sounding dejected. “It always runs away when I try to pet it.”

“Maybe it would like you more if you didn’t call it an ‘it’,” Jester reasoned.

“Do cats understand pronouns?” Nott asked.

“I don’t think cats speak English. At least, they never speak it out loud,” Caduceus added cryptically.

Jester wondered if Essek, their RA, would let them get a pet cat. It seemed like a higher possibility than him allowing them to get a pet goat. Maybe they could ask him for a goat first, and then after he said no to that, they could ask him for a cat, and he’d be more likely to say yes because a cat would seem relatively low-maintenance in comparison to a goat. Goats were really useful, though; they ate overgrown blackberry vines even though they were covered in thorns.

Their conversation got so sidetracked that Jester forgot all about the pretty girl from the gym until later that evening as she was washing her hair in the shower. Maybe she would ask for her number the next time she saw her, weirdness be damned. It never hurt to try, even if she was out of her league. She was pretty sure the girl was gay, at least; she’d been wearing a sleeveless hoodie, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This Jester chapter is on the short side but I promise there's much more of her to come! :)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <3

“So do you think she’s straight?” Molly asked, cupping his chin in one hand.

Beau sighed. They were in the library trying to work on their respective essays, but Molly kept bringing up Jester From The Gym every few minutes because he thought Beau’s awkward “love life” was a much more interesting topic than, like, the Alexander Technique or whatever theater majors wrote essays about.

“I’m, like, trying to actually get work done here,” Beau snapped.

Molly raised an eyebrow, peering at her mostly empty Word Document. They’d been sitting in the library for about two and a half hours. It was now completely dark outside the windows, although that was partially just because the sun set stupidly early at this time of year. “How’s that going for ya?”

Beau groaned and folded her body forward over the tabletop, scattering pages of notes over the remains of the Greek takeout they’d finished about an hour ago.

Molly patted her back. “There, there,” he said. “Now, give up hope on that essay and tell me all about this girl. What kind of vibe did you get from her?”

She lolled her head to one side so she could gaze up at Molly. He had a smudge of ink on his left cheekbone from when he’d fallen asleep on his notebook for about twenty minutes earlier that afternoon. (She was proud of herself for not having given into the urge to draw on his face.)

“It’s hard to tell,” she said. “She could’ve been straight, but she also could’ve been not, you know? Sometimes straight girls say things that sound flirty. And sometimes queer girls don’t seem like they’re being flirty, but they actually are trying to flirt with you. And sometimes they’re queer but they’re just not into you. Or they’re trying really hard to be your friend, which straight girls do too. Girls are so confusing, man!” She smacked a palm against the tabletop for emphasis. A guy at the table next to theirs flashed her a dirty look. Molly stuck his tongue out at him once he’d turned his back.

“Have you considered that it actually is clear when girls are flirting, but no one’s ever flirted with you so you don’t know what it’s like?” Molly inquired sweetly.

Beau glared at him. “Have you considered that you’re a dick?”

He beamed and posed and tossed his non-existent long hair over one shoulder. She flipped him off.

“For real, though, dearest roomie,” he said, voice slightly more serious. “I think you should take a chance and talk to her more the next time you see her. That’s the only way you’ll learn more about her. And if you put the moves on her and you’re not her type, well – she’ll just be flattered. And you’ll meet someone else, but this time around you’ll have more flirting experience. And we’ll all move on.”

Beau raised an eyebrow. Most of what came out of Molly’s mouth was unadulterated nonsense, but every now and then he said something disarmingly insightful and she remembered why she kept him around. Well, that and the fact that she loved him like a brother, even though he sang “Like A Prayer” at the top of his lungs in the shower at least three times a week.

“And who knows? Maybe she really is into you,” he added.

“A girl being into Beau? Seems unlikely,” said an accented voice from her other side. Beau sat up and looked around to see her friend Caleb standing next to the table, holding his laptop and a stack of books. He was wearing thick-framed glasses instead of his usual contacts, which was a sign that he was also in the library working on the same essay as Beau. Neither Beau nor Caleb was particularly friendly or outgoing by nature, but they’d ended up becoming close because, as fellow history majors, they shared half their classes and saw each other at all the book sales and job fairs and distinguished teaching award events, where they usually stood in the back and complained about the bad wine and the department head’s boring opening speech. They’d bonded over their mutual hatred of the frat boys and business majors who wound up in their history classes because they needed more humanities credits. The true kickoff moment of their friendship was when a professor had made some remark about how LGBT people were “not strongly present” during a certain time period and they’d made exasperated eye contact across the room without even trying. It was meant to be. Besides, they each respectively only ever really hung out with their best friend from high school, so they probably needed each other.

“Why are you guys so mean to me? Gay best friends in the movies are always so fun and supportive,” Beau whined.

“What they don’t tell you is that bi best friends are actually terrible. We criticize you constantly to keep you on your toes,” Caleb explained, winking at Molly. Who immediately knocked over his open water bottle, causing both him and Beau to fly into action to rescue their notes while Caleb hurried to the bathroom to get some paper towels.

“That was like, really bad,” Beau hissed. “I can’t believe you were trying to give me advice on flirting a few minutes ago!”

Molly just spread his hands helplessly. “Glasses?!”

“You think his glasses are hot? Are you kidding me? What is wrong with you? Do you have, like, a librarian kink?”

“Shut up! He’s coming back soon! You can’t tease me in front of him, I swear to God!”

“Fine, but you’re never ever allowed to make fun of me ever again for being useless around hot girls!”

“I don’t know if I can promise that!” Molly replied, sounding genuinely distressed.

When Caleb returned and helped them clean up the water, he asked if he could sit with them so he and Beau could work on the essay together and compare notes. During the course of the next hour, Beau made a surprising amount of progress and Molly said about three words out loud (maybe more like ten words if you counted nervously giggling when Caleb made bad history-related puns).

After Caleb said goodbye and headed back to his apartment, Beau turned around and whacked Molly in the chest with his now-empty water bottle.

“Ow, what was that for?” he asked, expression miffed.

“It’s for telling me to talk to Jester when you can’t even talk to Caleb!”

Molly pouted. “I never claimed to not be a hypocrite.”

Beau flashed him a withering look. “Okay, let’s make a pact. I promise to try to talk to Jester the next time I see her at the gym, as long as you promise to try to have a real conversation with Caleb the next time you see him. And no, leaving a complimentary sticky note on the ‘student of the month’ picture of him on the history building bulletin board does not count as a conversation.”

“I said his eyes were full of stories!”

“Yeah, and thank God you didn’t sign your name on that! Now, do you agree to this pact or not?”

“Ugh, fine. You have to do your thing first, though.”

“I’ll probably have to, since I’m going to the gym again tomorrow,” Beau said, stomach churning nervously. “Although I don’t know for sure she’ll be working when I go there.”

“Why don’t you just -”

“I know what you’re about to say, and no, I’m not going to find the employee schedule online and try to estimate what shift pattern she has so I can make sure to go there when she’s there. I’m not a goddamn serial killer.”

Molly shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

She rubbed a thumb over his cheekbone. “You’ve had ink on your face for, like, hours, by the way.”

He turned to her, looking horrified. She busted out laughing and nearly fell out of her chair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know there hasn't been much beaujes yet but it's gonna kick up soon ;D


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey friend I hope you're having a great day!

Thursday evenings at the gym were never very crowded, so they were an excellent opportunity for Jester to doodle all over the blank equipment request forms in her desk drawer. Nobody ever used them anyway – on the rare occasion when somebody did request equipment, she just told them they could go use it if they wanted to and didn’t bother making them fill out a form. Forms were stupid. Who was even going to look through them after they were filled out? They were probably just going to sit in a manila folder in a filing cabinet somewhere for years until somebody went on a Marie Kondo kick and threw them away without reading them.

She’d tried explaining this to her supervisor, Calianna, the last time Calianna had pointed out that maybe she shouldn’t be drawing a detailed pen-and-ink facsimile of Klimt’s The Kiss on the back of a form.

“We need those because if equipment goes missing, we can find out who used it last,” Calianna had told her earnestly.

“Isn’t that what the security cameras are for?” Jester had asked. “And if somebody really wanted to steal dumbbells from us, I don’t think they would fill out the paperwork to formally request them first.”

Calianna had just shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know! We have to follow protocol, though…”

Jester had never been a big fan of protocol, but she supposed it was the sort of thing you had to pay attention to if you were working a minimum-wage job at your university. Then again, what Calianna didn’t find out about would never hurt her. At the moment, Jester was working on a really cute comic about a pair of little pigs buying mushrooms at the farmers’ market, and she was planning on taking it home at the end of her shift and maybe giving it to Caduceus. As it turned out, working a boring reception job was a phenomenal opportunity for creative expression – and especially creative ingenuity around using the materials available.

The comic was almost done. Jester added some daisies around the borders of the paper as an extra touch – now it looked even prettier. She glanced up from her hard work and noticed Beau, the cute girl from the other day, approaching the doors of the lobby. Oh, good, that would make her shift much more fun. One of the perks of working at the gym was being able to meet all the hot athletic types who passed through. And all the other average people who weren’t necessarily athletic. Jester was queer and she was an artist who liked drawing faces and bodies, and the combination of those two traits meant that she thought almost everyone she met was beautiful in their own unique way. Beau was particularly beautiful, though – Jester had a thing for muscular girls with parts of their heads shaved, or maybe just girls who looked like they might play rugby. (Or maybe those were the same thing.)

“Hello again, Beau!” Jester called out, because she couldn’t help herself. When she thought someone was attractive, she was just drawn inexorably into their gravitational pull, tumbling in orbit around them and spouting flirty phrase after playful innuendo.

Growing up, she hadn’t always known exactly who she was attracted to – when she was little, she’d thought she liked girls, because she’d also thought she was a boy, and that liking girls was just what boys were supposed to do. And then she’d thought she might be a boy who liked boys, because she’d gotten the idea somewhere that that was what it meant when you were a boy who secretly wanted to be a girl. And then she’d realized that she actually WAS a girl, and she’d assumed that liking boys was just what girls were supposed to do. But then she still couldn’t stop thinking about how pretty and wonderful girls were, and she’d previously thought it was just because she identified as one of them, but it had gradually become apparent that she also wanted to kiss them. Like, a lot. They were all so beautiful, with their soft hair and sweet smiles, the way they danced, the way they smelled, their eyes, their hands, their voices and their laughter – every single one was a confection and a masterpiece.

Even now, she wasn’t always completely sure whether she liked boys as well, or if she ever had, or if she’d just been imagining it all along. Perhaps it didn’t really matter that much. It felt like it didn’t matter at all in moments like this, when she saw tall, sturdy-looking Beau, with her toned abs and her smooth brown skin and the wavy flyaway hairs framing her cheekbones. Yes, I am most definitely a girl who likes girls, she thought to herself, taking in Beau’s plump, chapped lower lip and the way she bit it slightly in concentration as she adjusted her duffel bag.

Beau approached Jester’s desk, pulling her ID card out of the pocket of her track pants. She looked a little awkward, gaze shifting between different points on the tiled floor instead of meeting Jester’s eyes. She was also wearing the exact same pair of track pants as the last time Jester had seen her – Jester remembered them because they fit her strong thighs very well (shut up!). So maybe Beau was just a little bit of a disaster. Jester could get on board with that – she was a bit of a disaster herself. In all four of her classes (all four!) she was the archetypal Girl Who Shows Up Late With Iced Coffee.

Beau scanned her card (successfully this time) and then awkwardly stood there for a moment, still not making eye contact.

Jester leaned forward on her elbows, beaded necklaces jangling. She blinked at Beau, batting her eyelashes. (She was a master of batting her eyelashes without making it super obvious that she was batting her eyelashes.) (And she was wearing some fantastic sparkly navy blue mascara today, too.) “Is there something else I can help you with?” she asked sweetly. There were a lot of things she would love to help Beau with.

Beau cleared her throat awkwardly, looking startled. “Uh…. Yeah, actually. There is. I, uh…” She squinted at the plaque on Jester’s desk that listed the reception services. “I would like to… check out some equipment.”

Jester raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Well, what equipment would you like to check out? We have ankle weights, exercise mats, kettle bells, foam rollers, stability balls, and basically everything you would need for sports, like lacrosse sticks and swim goggles and even soccer balls –”

“I’ll take a soccer ball!” Beau blurted.

“Okay…” Jester raised an eyebrow. So maybe Beau was kind of weird. Well, she could still get on board with that. She was pretty weird herself.

She was about to tell Beau to just go to the storage room and take a soccer ball (for whatever incomprehensible reason she needed one), but then an idea struck her.

“I need you to fill out one of these forms,” she told Beau very seriously, sliding the blank sheet across the desk. Well, it was mostly blank – there were only a few little drawings of planets and UFO’s in the corner. It was the blankest one she had!

Beau smirked a little at the drawings, but she didn’t say anything. “Sure, do you have a pen?”

Jester glanced at the mug of pens next to her clunky, outdated work computer. Another idea struck her. “Well – yes. But it’s technically against university policy for anyone but me to touch the pens at this desk.”

Beau raised an eyebrow. “Oh – is it?” She sounded dubious. Well, whatever. If she wanted a soccer ball, she was going to have to play along.

“Yes,” Jester informed her gravely. “So if you don’t have a pen of your own, I can just fill out the form for you and you can dictate your answers to me, okay?” She smiled cheekily.

Beau’s mouth twitched into a smile. It was a very attractive expression on her. “Okay,” she said. “What’s the first question?”

“What is your student ID number?” Jester asked, popping the lid off the pen with her teeth. Beau’s eyes tracked the movement. Score.

Jester proceeded to ask Beau the rest of the questions on the form, only sneaking a few fake ones in (“I need to write down your favorite color because it has to do with, ah, their survey data about, like, what color of equipment they should try to buy in the future,” she explained to a mildly confused Beau).

“Okay, now I need you to sign this,” Jester said. “But since you can’t use this pen, I’ll just hold it, and you guide my hand, all right?” Now, this was a gamble. But miraculously, Beau looked like she believed Jester’s bullshit. Maybe she was just a bit of a dumb jock. That was fine – dumb jocks were Jester’s type. Well, one of her types, at any rate.

Beau didn’t say anything as she guided Jester’s pen in the shape of her signature. She appeared to be concentrating very hard. Jester, meanwhile, was having the time of her LIFE. Not only did she get to basically, sort of, hold hands with a pretty girl, but she also got to be close enough to her to smell her woodsy masculine deodorant!

After the signature, Beau muttered something that sounded vaguely like “thank you” and then ran off. Hopefully she wasn’t late for a soccer game or something like that. Jester felt a little bit bad for taking up so much of her time. (She didn’t feel that bad.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jester: Oh you haven't heard?? *rolls a deception check*


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can you BELIEVE what happened on the latest episode

“And so then she, like, put her hand over mine so I could write my signature with her pen. And it was totally like we were holding hands. Oh my god, and her hands are so soft and she smells SO good. Can you believe that shit? What do you think it means?”

Fjord stroked his chin pensively. He and Beau were leaning against the counters in the back of Payaso Pizza, which was their usual conversation spot during work hours. The Payaso they worked at was located in the student dining hall so most of the kitchen was in full view from the customers’ side of the register, but Fjord and Beau had spent several months finding the exact positions where they could stand and talk and the customers could only easily see one of them (they traded off who had to stand in the customer-sightline zone, sometimes altering the pattern if one of them agreed to do an extra closing chore for the other). “I don’t know… I mean, she was probably flirting, right?”

“How do you know, though? I mean, do you even know how to flirt?” Beau asked skeptically.

“I have a boyfriend!” Fjord raised an affronted eyebrow.

“How did you pull that off?”

Fjord scowled at the tiled floor like he was thinking about it really hard. “I don’t know,” he finally admitted.

Beau spread her hands, like ‘See?’

Fjord sighed and wiped his flour-stained hands on his apron – which was already covered in flour, so there wasn’t much of a point to the action. “Look, why don’t you just ask her out?”

“Because what if she’s straight?”

“I really don’t think she’s straight… like, didn’t you say she’s an art major?”

“There are straight art majors!”

Fjord chewed his lip doubtfully. “Are you sure?”

“You’d be surprised!”

Fjord sighed again and ran a hand through his green-dyed undercut (essentially mixing flour into his hair). “I mean, like, even if she is straight, what would be the harm in asking her out?”

“She might be shitty about it!”

“I don’t think she’d be shitty about it… She sounds really nice, from what you’ve said.”

“I’ve only met her twice!”

Fjord frowned. “You know, you’re coming up with a lot of reasons not to ask her out. I’m not trying to debate you, here. Either ask her out or don’t, just stop overthinking it.”

Beau slumped, body melting against the counter. “Ugh, you’re right. This is why you’re probably gonna be promoted to junior manager.”

“Well, you also have a pretty good shot, Beau, I mean, you’re way better at cooking the asparagus primo than I am-”

“Neither of you is gonna be junior manager if you don’t stop horsing around back here instead of manning the counter like you’re supposed to!” Dairon, their manager, yelled from the back room.

“Sorry, Dairon,” they yelled in unison and scrambled to the register. Where there was already a decent-sized line of customers. Dammit.

And lo and behold – there in the line was Jester herself, standing next to a tall, slender, hippie-looking guy with pink hair and a side shave.

As Jester and her hippie friend worked their way to the front of the line, Beau’s panic increased as she mentally debated whether to stay out here or go hide in the back room with Dairon and pretend she also had inventory sheets to fill out. No, Dairon would see right through that, and Jester had already noticed her anyway, so hiding now would just make her seem like a weirdo. Dammit!

Jester caught Beau’s eyes and wiggled her fingers in a cute little wave, smiling like Beau was exactly the person she’d been hoping to see. It was around eleven pm, so she was wearing fluffy pink slippers, pajama shorts, and a worn, oversized T-shirt inscribed with a label in Cyrillic script – probably the name of a school or something. Her heavy, sturdily built brown thighs were making Beau’s brain short-circuit, as was the lock of silky hair that had fallen out of the underside of her ponytail and the delicate knobs of her ankles and the curves of her calves and the doll-like bow of her upper lip and the hints of her silhouette that brushed against the loose fabric of her shirt and the fact that she’d forgotten to put an earring in her right ear and the way her cheeks crinkled her eyes when she smiled – Get it together, Lionett, she mentally admonished herself.

“Beau? Beau? Hey, Beau!” Fjord’s voice drifted into her consciousness from some other dimension. “Hey, stop spacing out! Can you get a slice of meat lovers’ to go for this person, please?”

She glared at him over her shoulder. “Yeah, yeah,” she grumbled, stumping away to do the job that she was being paid to do.

“Hi Fjord,” said Jester’s friend when he and Jester finally reached the register – what felt like hours later, but it was probably only, like, five minutes.

“Hi Cad,” Fjord replied. “What can I get for ya?”

What the hell? How did Fjord know Jester’s friend? Why had he never thought to mention that during their earlier conversation? Was he friends with Jester, too? Beau stared furiously at the shaved back of his head, silently willing him to glance over his shoulder and see her scandalized expression.

He finally looked at her. ‘What?’ he mouthed.

Jester cleared her throat. “Hi, Beau,” she said.

Beau spun around hurriedly. “Hi,” she replied, hoping she didn’t sound too breathless.

Jester beamed, tilting her head like a pleased Golden Retriever. “So you work at Payaso, huh?”

“It’s because she is a payaso,” Fjord cut in smoothly.

Beau glared at him harder than ever, because what the fuck, the girl she liked was here, he was supposed to be helping her seem cool! “Wouldn’t that make you a clown, too, Fjord?”

Fjord just shrugged, smirking at her.

Jester giggled, smiling at Fjord. Beau was going to murder him later and turn him into pepperoni.

After Jester had ordered a quadruple cheese slice for herself and a quadruple mushroom for her friend (Cad?) she leaned over the counter to peer at Beau, just as she had both times Beau had seen her at the gym reception desk. “Hey, Beau…” she said, in a quiet conspiratorial tone.

Beau headed over to face her, tossing her cleaning rag over one shoulder like a barkeep in a sitcom. “Yeah?” she responded, hoping her voice sounded mysterious and aloof and not just incredibly soft and enamored.

Jester’s lips quirked up to one side in a secret smile. Her skin glowed in the dim yellowy light of the dining hall at night. Oh, Beau was so fucked. SO fucked.

“Can I have your phone number?” she asked. Beau’s heart pounded like a marching band. “So I can… notify you when there’s… another soccer ball… available?”

Oh, this was about the stupid soccer ball thing. Dammit, Beau should never have gone for that ruse – she just panicked because she couldn’t think of anything cool to say to Jester.

“Uh, yeah, sure, lemme get a pen,” Beau said nonchalantly, trying to contain her internal screaming. Was THIS flirting? Was it? Why were girls so confusing?

As she headed towards the register to take one of Fjord’s pens, though, Dairon’s voice came from the back again. “Beau, get back here, I need you to finish this inventory for me!”

Beau turned to Jester, face desperate. “Uh… I need to…” she said awkwardly, jerking a thumb over one shoulder towards the back room.

Jester twisted her lips in disappointment, but she shrugged good-naturedly. “No worries, Beau, I’ll just come back.” As she linked arms with Cad and picked up her pizza plate in the other hand, she winked at Beau over her shoulder. Beau very nearly died of a heart attack. She was almost a little mad at Jester for nearly causing her place of death to be Payaso Pizza.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Payaso means clown in Spanish - the pizza chain in this story is ~inspired~ by a real Seattle pizza chain whose name is the word 'clowns' in another language (if you go to college in Seattle, you might know it)
> 
> Thank you for reading! We're getting towards the end of the awkward running-into-each-other-by-chance-on-campus scenes - soon the Real Shit will start ;)


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading, I love you <3

Like most student unions, the queer student union at Jester’s university was in no way a monolithic bastion for all the students it claimed to represent. It was primarily a haven for a small, close-knit network of acquaintances who were heavily involved in all its programs and events, as well as a few of their outlying friends who wound up in their orbit. The vast majority of queer students visited the union office maybe once a year to pick up free strawberry-flavored condoms and maybe a flyer for a charity event that they would mark on their calendar but then end up bailing on. Jester appeared there every couple of months to see if they had any of those adorable little heart-shaped pride flag stickers that she could attach to her laptop and water bottle. Usually all of the most popular pride flags were gone by the time she got to them, but she could sometimes find a pan pride sticker and maybe even a trans one if she was lucky. One time she’d found a shimmery star-shaped sticker with a fairly obscure pride flag that she didn’t recognize, and none of her friends recognized it either. (She’d put it on her binder anyway because it was pretty.)

Jester hadn’t made it to the queer student union at all this school year because she was subliminally aware that one of her exes hung out there occasionally and she was paranoid about running into them. But then she realized that that was a stupid reason to avoid going somewhere, especially since she’d only dated this person for a couple months anyway. Her rainbow heart sticker was peeling off of the back of her pencil box and she needed a new one more badly than she needed to cater to her fear of interacting with Keg From English 102.

“Hi, how can I help you?” the receptionist asked brightly as soon as she swung open the door of the queer student union office.

Jester froze. She hadn’t been expecting anyone to talk to her. Most of the previous times she’d been to the office, there’d been no one at the reception desk, and when there was someone there, they were perpetually deeply involved in a phone conversation about Latin American indie films (it was always the same person and they apparently had very niche interests). Evidently the union had hired a new receptionist this year. One who was very outgoing and cared a lot about doing their job correctly. Was this what Jester was like at the gym? She had the brief worry that maybe she needed to tone down her enthusiastic energy a bit. Then she thought, No, I’m perfect and I should keep doing everything exactly the same way.

She closed her red-and-white umbrella (it looked like a peppermint candy!) and shook the rain off it a little. The receptionist raised a mildly displeased eyebrow at the water droplets now scattered on the gray carpet, which Jester thought was a little dumb because it wasn’t like the queer student union was the world’s most classy locale. It was a small room on the third floor of the campus center with a few sagging couches, a couple of secondhand desktop computers, and, seemingly, several thousand posters for student theater productions. Where had all those come from? Jester could’ve sworn there had been considerably less of them last year.

She flashed the receptionist her best winning smile and tucked her hair behind her ears. It was only a little wet – even though she’d had her umbrella, the rain went sideways when it was windy. She also needed to cut her bangs, she realized. It was getting to the point that it might be difficult for people to notice her eyeshadow, which was an issue that needed to be rectified as soon as possible, because today it was shimmery lavender-silver-rose and everyone should be able to see it.

“Hi, yes, I was wondering if you have any free stickers?” she asked.

The receptionist smirked and stepped out from behind the desk. They were taller than her (or maybe they were the same height, but just wearing heels) and had a sort of “secretly built” type of body where they weren’t obviously muscular like Beau but Jester could tell they were stronger than they might seem from a distance. It was also fairly easy for her to make this assessment because they were wearing extremely tight pinstriped pants in shades of purple that matched their mane of curly hair, and a loose peasant top that was practically falling off their shoulders and revealed a generous helping of collarbone, chest, and multiple novelty steampunk-looking necklaces. “I admire your spirit of truthfulness,” they said. “Most people who want free stickers and buttons just pretend that they want to sign up to volunteer at a fundraiser or something. I’d much rather have you be honest and tell me you’re only here to raid us like a marauding pirate than have you text me the day of a fundraiser to let me know you can’t make it because you’ve got an exam coming up.” They made a dismissive hand gesture. “We ALL have exams coming up. We’re in college!”

Jester’s eyes widened cartoonishly. “You have buttons this year?!”

The receptionist winked and strode over to the table covered in brochures. “Oh, you bet we do,” they said, pulling a box out from underneath. Lo and behold – it was full to the brim with buttons! They sparkled enticingly in the fluorescent light. Jester couldn’t wait to get her hands on them.

Laughing, the receptionist stepped aside as Jester attacked the button box. “Go wild and take as many as you want. We’ve had all of these all quarter and no one ever takes them. I think people just don’t know they’re there. They’re one of the many reforms I’ve brought to my new reception regime.” They peered critically around the room. “Speaking of which – we desperately need some twinkle lights in here. But I don’t want to take the bus all the way to Target, you know?”

Jester perked up, pocketing a handful of buttons (some for herself and some for Nott, who was an avid collector). “Oh, you know what? I have tons of twinkle lights, more than I can fit in my dorm! Do you want me to bring you some?”

The receptionist gasped. “Really, would you do that?”

Jester beamed and jumped up and down excitedly. “I’d love to!” She really would. Maybe this would be her “in” to finally get involved in the inner workings of the queer student union. They probably had, like, secret champagne parties for people who helped them decorate the office.

“That would be the best!” the receptionist said, and then their elegant face turned bashful. “Oh, I’m sorry, I’ve been so rude! My name is Mollymauk Tealeaf, Molly to my friends. And I have a feeling we’re going to be friends. He/him pronouns but I won’t mind if you call me anything, really. And you are…?”

Jester curtsied, her skirt pockets jingling with buttons. “Jester Lavorre, at your service, she/her pronouns please and thank you!”

When he heard her name, a weird look crossed Molly’s face. It was sort of the expression someone might make if they were on Jeopardy and they saw that there was a question category they knew they could totally ace. (It didn’t make very much sense in this context, at least to Jester.) “What? Have you heard my name somewhere else?” Jester asked excitedly. That would be totally cool if he had. What if she was secretly famous around school and she hadn’t even realized?

“Oh, you could say that, dear,” Molly replied cryptically, twirling one of his dangling earrings. “Hey, by the way – this weekend we’re having an event at Comrades, it’s this gay club in Capitol Hill. It’s on Saturday night and a bunch of really cool people are coming – do you think you could make it?”

Jester gasped audibly. An invitation to party at a nightclub? This was by far her most successful visit to the queer student union. “Um, DEFINITELY.”

Molly grinned, dark eyes gleaming. “Perfect,” he said. “Wear something scandalous with lots of glitter. I certainly will be.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Absolutely cracking myself up over the name I came up with for this fictional nightclub (inspired by the less ridiculous name of a real nightclub)


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi there! Hope you're having a fantastic day

Beau took a sip of her beer and unbuttoned another top button. She only had a few buttons to go before she was fully walking around with an open shirt, but nightclubs made her so sweaty, especially at three am when they were packed with people, bodies glimmering in the multicolored wash of dim disco light and drunk voices drowning in the overpowering beat of some EDM remix of a Top Forty song from three years ago. The crowd had almost become a writhing multi-headed beast, a single hive mind grinding on each other and trying not to spill their technicolor cocktails on the sticky dance floor.

Beau preferred to sit moodily by herself at the bar.

She didn’t usually show up to queer student union events; Molly went to practically all of them because he worked there, and if she happened to be bumming around the apartment when he left, he could typically drag her along with him by playfully guilting her (“Alone on a Saturday night? God, you’re pathetic!”) or whining enough (“Beauuuu you haaaave to go with me, everybody else there is super white and I won’t be able to deal with it!”).

At the moment, though, Molly was dancing with wild abandon in a group of particularly flamboyant queer student union regulars, all of them decked out in their gender-anarchist best from the local thrift stores and each other’s years-old collections of Pride gear. A group that included, to Beau’s abject horror and unspeakable excitement, Jester From The Gym. She was wearing an adorable Audrey-Hepburn-style Little Black Dress with lots of less Hepburn-esque mesh cutouts, accessorized with a shiny pink patent-leather purse shaped like a piggy bank, massive lollipop earrings, ultraviolet-white platform tennis shoes that made her almost as tall as Molly, and enough glitter that the light reflecting off of her body and her jewelry and her two French braids could probably be seen from the International Space Station.

She was also wearing hot pink fishnet stockings. And that. That was not good for Beau’s blood pressure.

Beau’s plain blue button-down and dark gray skinny jeans paled in comparison. She might as well be Caleb, she thought derisively. (Then felt a little bad, because he was allowed to wear ratty brown sweaters and cuffed khakis all the time if he wanted to.)

She sighed and slumped against one elbow, running a hand through her hair and probably making it look like she’d just been standing in a wind tunnel. Even though she was twenty-three and she’d been an out-and-proud gay woman for years and she generally liked the way she looked and the way she acted (even though Molly called her “unnecessarily rude” about four times a day), she still sometimes felt as though beautiful femme girls like Jester were miles out of her league. Jester was so graceful and wore pretty clothes and had a heart-melting laugh and smelled like a fancy boutique; Beau was so moody and wore the same clothes every day and looked mean and smelled like men’s deodorant from the drugstore bargain bin. Even now, Jester was gyrating her body with so much joy and confidence; she wasn’t exactly a great dancer, but she exuded such an aura of un-self-conscious love of movement that her lack of coordination didn’t matter at all. She was a marvel to behold, like a high-definition photo of a distant galaxy. Jester could probably have anyone in this nightclub, anyone in their university, anyone in the entire world – what reason would she possibly have to pick Beau?

As Beau watched her from afar, Jester’s eyes met hers for a split second. A surprised smile flickered across her beautiful face, and then she was gone again, obscured by a chiaroscuro of dancing figures.

“You look excited to be here,” said a voice to her right.

Beau looked around to see Reani, one of Molly’s queer student union friends. Beau had met her at an open mic night a quarter or two ago (which she’d attended solely because Molly had promised to do all of the dishes for two weeks, after half an hour of tense negotiation).

Beau raised an eyebrow and took another sip. “Oh, yeah. I love sweating my ass off in a dark, crowded, noisy room full of people trying to get some. I definitely do not regret paying the cover charge.”

Reani chuckled, ducking her head. Beau took a moment to admire her outfit; she was wearing a loose, flowy, cream-colored satin dress with spaghetti straps and a hem that fell to her ankles. It was an unusual look for winter, but somehow it made sense for Reani. The low neckline revealed a pleasant stretch of subtly sparkling brown chest. Her gold hoop earrings flashed in the disco lights.

Reani glanced up through her false eyelashes, smirking at Beau. She reached up and tucked one of Beau’s perpetually present flyaways behind her ear. “Uh…” Beau stuttered nervously.

“I agree wholeheartedly. About the club, that is,” she said, voice low enough that Beau had to lean closer to hear. “Do you wanna get out of here, then?”

Beau’s heart thumped. Normally she would jump at an offer like that, but the thing was, she’d been thinking about Jester pretty much non-stop for the last hour. Or maybe day. Maybe week. Maybe more. And she doubted it would stop anytime within the next few minutes, which wouldn’t be fair to Reani. She deserved Beau’s full attention, and Beau didn’t have much attention to spare due to a certain blue-haired art major.

Reani noticed Beau’s hesitation before Beau even opened her mouth. “Or not,” she replied smoothly, clearly unfazed. “You have a lot on your mind, I can tell.” She leaned in again and whispered in Beau’s ear, warm breath tickling her earlobe. “When you stop being preoccupied with whoever-she-is, I’m just a DM away.” She flashed Beau one last smile and slid off the barstool to rejoin the crowd, hips swaying in her long sheath skirt.

Beau sighed heavily. If she was turning down gorgeous girls, that meant the situation was BAD. She was getting into serious crush territory.

She set her beer down. Fuck it, this was stupid. She couldn’t just keep moping in the shadows like some kind of Caleb; she was going to go over there and dance with Jester, and she was just tipsy enough to maybe, possibly, not make a total fool of herself.

But as she straightened up to get off the barstool, she stopped in dismay. There was Molly, there were Molly’s friends – but Jester was nowhere to be seen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Told you there'd be a teeny bit of angst :')


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi there! Thank you for reading, hope you're having a lovely day!

At this time of night Capitol Hill was mostly pitch-dark with only the reflections of streetlights and neon signs shimmering on the rain-slick pavement. A few drunken partygoers still milled around the streets, their laughter and chatter blending into a quiet hum with the distant rush of cars and the muffled boom of music from nightclubs and house parties in derelict apartments – broken by a clatter as Jester kicked a crumpled soda can onto the sewer grate.

And then immediately felt bad, so she gingerly picked it up with her thumb and forefinger and deposited it in a recycling bin (good old Seattle with its public recycling bins).

She sighed heavily, slumping her shoulders and hanging her arms at her sides, nearly dropping her purse on the wet sidewalk. What was she doing? She didn’t really have a plan. She’d just seen Beau talking very, very closely with that very, very pretty girl and immediately felt sick to her stomach and impulsively slipped out through the crowd, emerging into the cold, quiet night air. Well, relatively quiet, compared to the club, at least. Her ears were still ringing from the boom of the speakers.

Jester hadn’t been to very many nightclubs, and she still wasn’t completely sold on the experience. It was too loud to hear anyone talking and too densely packed to freely dance the way she loved to and too dark to show off her outfit in all the glory it deserved. Maybe her experience was also colored by the fact that she’d seen her crush apparently flirting with someone else. That could be it.

Jester was surprised by how dejected she felt. She hadn’t realized how invested she was in Beau. Evidently she was in deep. She might truly have a thing for this girl. A thing that, sadly, might not go anywhere.

The truth was that Jester was very confident. Even with her experiences with dysphoria and internalized shame and regular old run-of-the-mill self-doubt, she’d spent years learning how to care for herself with tenderness and cultivate an exuberant self-love that shone from within. And yet every now and then she got these little flashes of worry that people – potential romantic partners in particular – wouldn’t like her as much as they would a cis girl. There was no logic to it – when she actually thought about it, there was really nothing that cis girls had that trans girls couldn’t have, other than society’s arbitrary favor. She personally had a slight preference for trans people over cis people as friends and partners, all else being equal, because she found they tended to have a more nuanced and interesting perspective on gender and sexuality. But despite that, the little flashes of worry still came, unbidden, as if society was a very weak parasite that lived in her mind and rarely did anything noticeable but occasionally piped up when her defenses were down and she least expected it. Maybe it lived in everyone’s mind. Maybe she just needed to ignore it harder. “Shut up, society!” she said out loud, for good measure. An elderly homeless man sitting on a bench nearby shot her an approving glance. “Hear, hear, missy,” he croaked.

So maybe that was part of why seeing the girl in the satin gown whispering in Beau’s ear had upset her so much. To be completely fair, she didn’t actually know whether that girl was cis or not, and given that they were in a queer space, the odds were impossible to pin down. But the little flash still came from the society-parasite – that fear that no matter how beautiful or clever or funny or gentle or talented or well-dressed or sweet-smelling she was, people would still prefer cis girls. It was a dumb, irrational thought. And even though there were people out there who probably really would like her better if she were cis, she generally didn’t care about those people anyway, so their prejudice didn’t hurt her, at least not as badly as it potentially could. But she cared about Beau. Kind of a lot, as it would appear.

Jester sighed heavily again and rummaged in the pocket of her dress for her earbuds. Darn it, she’d forgotten them. She did find a withered dollar bill, though. She smoothed it flat against the front of her skirt and handed it to the old homeless man, who nodded and grinned. “Thank you, miss.”

Jester continued ambling along the dark street. She had no idea where she was. It probably wasn’t the most safe for her to be wandering around at night like this, either. It was well after one am so the light rail definitely wasn’t running anymore, and it hardly mattered because she wasn’t completely sure how to find her way to the station anyway. (The neighborhood wasn’t very large, but Jester had never been known for her sense of direction.)

She spotted a bus stop a block away, the reflective sign glinting in the sweeping headlights from a passing car. She began to walk with more purpose until she reached it. Squinting at the sign, she found a route that would take her back to campus, but the next bus wouldn’t come for forty-five minutes. She slumped over, groaning loudly, and collapsed onto the bench, resigned to a long, long wait. She couldn’t even listen to music!

For what felt like an absolutely tortuous length of time, she sat, swinging her legs, listening only to the low roar of nighttime traffic punctuated by the faraway wail of sirens. She absently chipped at her nail polish.

This was the worst. Jester was going to lose her mind.

“Hey – Jester? Is that you?”

Jester leaned forward to see around the side of the bus shelter. A figure stepped into a view. A tall, lean figure with her hair pulled back in a top knot.

“Beau!” Jester exclaimed in shock. “What are you doing here?”

Beau quirked a smile and sat down next to Jester on the bench. “I could ask you the same thing.”

Jester hunched forward, wrapping her arms around her stomach. “I just – wasn’t feeling well.” It was technically true. Sadness did make her nauseous. Although the nausea was fading now.

Beau’s eyebrows pinched together in worry. “Oh – are you okay? Like, are you sick? Or something?”

“I’m fine, don’t worry, I was probably just dancing too hard, you know.”

Beau grinned. “You were dancing pretty hard. But you’re a good dancer, I saw you.”

Jester’s heartbeat tripped over itself. She elbowed Beau. “If you saw me, why didn’t you come say hi?”

Beau’s grinned faltered slightly. “I – I don’t know. I was going to but then, uh… Someone started talking to me and I got distracted.”

Jester’s heartbeat fell flat on the pavement. “Oh. Right.”

“But then – But then I saw you were gone, and I asked Molly where you went, and he said he saw you just, like, run out. And I was kind of worried, so I came outside to look for you. I was actually about to give up and take the bus home,” she finished ruefully.

Jester’s heartbeat sat up, dusted itself off, and began skipping again. “Oh, really? You were looking for me?”

“Yeah, I was. Not very well, I guess.”

Jester felt her face crinkle into a laugh-frown of pleased confusion. “Yeah, really not, apparently! I didn’t go very far and I was walking in a pretty straight line!”

Beau huffed, pretending to be miffed, but Jester could see her eyes sparkling with amusement. “I guess I was just looking in all the wrong places, then.”

Jester tilted her head, smiling at her. Beau's shadowy profile glowed amber in the streetlights, highlighting the subdued curve of her nose and the fullness of her lips. Her eyelashes were smudges of charcoal. “Yeah, I guess you were,” she replied softly.

Beau blinked at her, mouth moving like she was thinking of saying something but the thought had disappeared. For a moment that felt hours long, they just looked at each other in the quiet night. Jester felt like she couldn’t breathe. No, that wasn’t right – it was more like she didn’t need to breathe.

A car roared by, bursting the bubble and also driving through a puddle and splashing dirty water several feet in the air. Jester shrieked and giggled as she lifted her legs out of the way to protect her expensive sneakers. Beau cursed loudly and shielded herself with her arms.

Jester realized a second later that she’d unintentionally put her legs on Beau’s lap. Beau looked down at them in surprise and Jester smirked. “Is it all right if I just keep these here for the moment? I’m so tired from all the dancing, you know…”

Beau lightly flicked Jester’s shin, chuckling. “Yeah, I don’t mind.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic has officially pissed off its first terf! (EDIT: I've marked their comments as spam, and thank you very much to the very nice folks who stepped in and replied to them - even just seeing hateful rhetoric can be more hurtful than you might realize at the time, so please give yourself some extra tender loving care in the next few days, because the last thing I would want is for you to be hurt because of some asshole who gets off on leaving rude comments on ao3 fics)
> 
> I can't imagine why transphobes would even be interested in reading this fic in the first place, but now seems as good a time as any to put it out there that if you consider yourself a terf and/or have any sort of negative or prejudicial views toward trans people, kindly fuck off :)
> 
> To those of you who support this fic, take the time to leave kudos and kind comments, or even just read and enjoy it, I am so eternally grateful! Thank you for supporting trans-friendly cr content! The best way to show terfs that they're not welcome in the critrole fandom is to continue supporting and uplifting fics and art that positively depict trans characters, and even create that content if you're feeling up to it! Love you <3


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Hope you're having a great day <3

Caleb and Beau had decided at some point back in spring quarter of last year that it would be a pleasant idea to commit themselves to spend an afternoon studying at Gasworks Park once a week. They’d made this decision back when the days were long and drenched in sunlight and there was nothing more wonderful than sitting by glass-blue lake on the rolling lawn (well, on a picnic blanket, because the ground was actually about seventy percent grass and thirty percent geese droppings) next to an enormous steampunk-dystopian-looking rusted-out industrial structure whose original purpose was an unsolvable mystery, whiling the hours away until the sky glowed orange and lavender over the city skyline.

Now, of course, the sun set before Beau’s classes were even over, and it was so bitterly cold that sitting on the ground for longer than a few minutes would certainly give you frostbite in the butt. If that was even a thing – Molly said it was, but Molly was also full of shit more often than not.

Even though months had passed since Gasworks Park stopped being a pleasant place to spend the afternoon, Caleb and Beau were both stubborn assholes and neither one of them would break first. “Are you ready to go to Gasworks, Beauregard?” Caleb said, meeting her at the door of her apartment, wrapped in what looked like two scarves over a puffer coat that made him appear twice as big.

Beau heard a crash from Molly’s room. She rolled her eyes. “You wanna come with us, Mol?” she yelled.

There were several seconds of silence. “NoIhavetoomuchhomeworksorry,” said Molly’s muffled voice.

Beau frowned. “What the fuck did you say? Can you talk at a normal pace?”

“We are going to study!” Caleb called.

No answer. Beau sighed as she pulled Molly’s eighties-style colorblock windbreaker on over her two sweaters. “He’s not coming, let’s just go.”

Once they’d reached the bottom of the stairs she realized she’d forgotten her gloves, but she didn’t want to climb back up to get them. Climbing up the stairs was about as unconscionable as traversing Antarctica in jeans. She just shoved her hands deep in her pockets and hoped for the best.

They were in the damp, dead period of winter when fallen leaves still littered the wet pavement, but the leaves were all brown and mud-softened by multiple rains and the trees themselves were bare and skeletal, a dark lattice against wan white skies. As they walked, they chatted idly about their shared history classes, Caleb weaving a serpentine path to avoid puddles and Beau taking care to walk directly through them and splash dirty water on both their ankles (always prompting an equally dirty look from Caleb).

“So I think things are really progressing with this girl I like,” Beau commented as the two of them stumped through the wet grass of the mostly-deserted park. At this time of year, the problem wasn’t so much about finding a spot that wasn’t already occupied by people as it was about finding a spot where they wouldn’t totally sink into a quagmire of mud.

“What girl?” Caleb asked, staring at the central hill of the park as if he were debating whether it was worth it to climb to the top.

“What do you mean, what girl? I’ve literally told you about her a million times. I talked to you about her TODAY in Dr. Sol’s class!”

“You didn’t ‘literally’ tell me a million times,” he said, smirking at her. She took off her beanie hat and whipped it at him with as much force as she could muster. “It was more like fifty,” he continued as she knelt to pick her hat up off the ground, glaring at him.

“Stop messing with me, okay, I’m telling you about some real shit going on in my life!”

“I’ll never stop messing with you,” he grinned at her. She yanked his own hat off his head. “Hey, I need that…” he whined.

They finally spread their picnic blanket (which featured the psychedelically embellished slogan ‘Summer of Love’ surrounded by flourishing rainbow flowers and a groovy sun wearing shades). It was hard to get it to lie flat with the cold wind blowing off the lake, but they managed after about thirty-six attempts.

“So I can’t believe I’m asking YOU this,” Beau began, sitting down and pulling her laptop out of her bag. Dammit, her fingers were so frozen it was going to be almost impossible to type. She wished she’d remembered her gloves. She wished she hadn’t been too lazy to go back and get them as soon as she realized she didn’t have them. She wished she and Caleb could just study in a nice, cozy café with central heating. Don’t break first, Lionett, don’t break first, she insisted to herself.

“Asking me what?” Caleb asked, pulling his own laptop out. He was wearing those mittens with tops you could pull back like hoods, revealing that they were fingerless gloves underneath.

“If you have any, like, romance tips. Like, for how I could demonstrate my intentions to Jester, in like, a romantical way.”

“Romantical’s not a word,” Caleb said. “Also, have you met me? I am not a man who goes on dates often. I only own two pairs of pants.”

“Okay, you need to get another pair of pants. But like, what are you trying to prove to me? I ran out of body wash two weeks ago and instead of buying more I’ve just been using hand soap.”

“I can’t remember what color my desk is because it’s been completely covered in papers and books pretty much since I bought it.”

“Yesterday I got scheduled for a morning shift at Payaso and so I slept in my work uniform the night before so I could wait until the last possible minute to get out of bed.”

Caleb snickered. “Okay, I don’t know if I can top that.”

Beau flipped him off. “This is stupid, anyway. My point is, you may be a disaster not unlike me, but the sad truth is that I literally don’t think I have any other friends who are better at dating than you, which is maybe more pathetic than any of the other things I’ve just said about myself. So do you have any ideas? I got nothing here, bro.”

Caleb’s face melted into a mock-pitying expression. “Poor you.” She flipped him off again, pulling her hand away as he feinted like he was going to grab her middle finger. “I don’t know, why don’t you just ask her out for a cup of coffee like a normal person?”

Beau flashed him a withering look. “Come on, that’s so basic! She probably gets asked out for coffee by randos, like, every day! I need to prove to her that she’s uh…” She cleared her throat awkwardly, face heating up. “That she’s special.”

Caleb performed an exaggerated jaw-drop. “Why, Beauregard! I do believe you’ve got it bad, as they say.”

“Fuck you,” she growled, pulling the collar of Molly’s windbreaker up over her nose. “Now give me some advice that isn’t totally useless.”

“Give her a free pizza?”

“I think I’d get fired. Next.”

“Ferris wheel ride?”

“Ferris wheels are boring, they don’t even go fast. Next.”

“Rollercoaster ride, then?”

“Definitely not, what if I, like, throw up on her? I don’t even know where to find a rollercoaster, anyway. Next!”

“Uh… the movies?”

“Still basic, next.”

“Just… get her a bouquet of flowers?”

“SO basic, Caleb, and all they do is wilt. Next.”

Caleb frowned. “Are you sure? I think flowers are nice. People like flowers. People other than you, apparently.”

Beau spread her hands. “What? Sure, they’re pretty, but what can you do with them? It would be cheaper to just give someone a photo of flowers. At least they can keep that for as long as they want.”

Caleb rolled his eyes. “All right, Ebenezer Scrooge.” He thought for a moment. “Does Molly like flowers?” he asked, seemingly apropos of nothing.

“I thought we were talking about me right now,” Beau scowled. “But yeah, he does. He’s obsessed with them. Back in high school he lived with this European exchange student for like a school year and she taught him how to make flower crowns, like, legit fancy ones that you would post on Pinterest or something. He still has a bunch of em and he uses them for like, selfies and costume parties and shit. Why?”

“No reason,” he said, a little too quickly.

She stared at him suspiciously. “Has he talked to you lately? Molly, I mean.”

“No, not really. I ran into him in the cafeteria yesterday, actually, when we were both in line for tacos. I think we just saw each other for a couple minutes before he had to go to work.”

Molly had had the day off work yesterday. That fucker, she thought to herself, remembering the deal they’d made in the library that one time. She was going to absolutely tear his shit apart as soon as she got home.

“Oh, Scheisse, my laptop just powered down, I think it got too cold,” Caleb swore, frantically tapping the power key.

He looked up at Beau. Beau looked back. Caleb kept looking. Beau kept looking back. Caleb raised his eyebrows. Beau squinted. Caleb jutted out his chin. Beau folded her arms.

A full minute passed. Then:

“CANWEJUSTGOTOACAFEINSTEAD?!” they both yelled at the same time. Then stared at each other, breathing heavily. Then doubled over laughing.

“I hate you so fucking much,” Beau wheezed, tears of laughter prickling her eyes. Caleb just threw his hat at her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you've seen the movie 10 Things I Hate About You, there's a scene that takes place in Gasworks Park! If you haven't, you should look up a picture of it because it's pretty cool :)  
(And you should also watch that movie! It's a classic)


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey friends! Sorry this update is just a little late and this particular chapter is on the short side, but I have two more to make up for it :)

“Hi, Calianna! How are you today?”

Calianna, head bowed over the reception desk because she was almost certainly playing Minecraft on her phone, popped up as Jester walked in, a bashful smile spreading over her face. “Hi, Jester… you’re eleven minutes late, you know.”

“You are playing games, you know,” Jester retorted playfully, leaning over the counter to snatch Calianna’s phone out of her hand. Ah, Skyrim, that was new. She must have just gotten around to downloading it.

“Hey!” Calianna shrieked, then furtively swiveled her head to make sure no one was nearby to witness their unprofessionalism. Fortunately, the lobby was deserted, as it generally was on weekdays around lunchtime. It was also uncharacteristically sunny outside, so people were probably taking an advantage of the rare weather to walk or jog or play Frisbee outside instead of consigning themselves to a gray-walled room full of treadmills. It was, of course, still freezing cold, but that was no deterrent to the vitamin-D-deprived Pacific Northwestern masses who lost their minds at the sight of an eggshell-blue sky.

Jester herself was a bit bummed that she had to work today. Caduceus had invited her and Nott to play spikeball in the Quad with him and his boyfriend, and Jester had been desperately wanting to learn literally anything about Caduceus’s mysterious boyfriend for what felt like geological ages. She didn’t think he was deliberately trying to keep his relationship a secret from her, but he was just naturally sort of… vague. When Jester had asked what color his boyfriend’s eyes were, he’d responded that they were similar to the color of a plant in his mothers’ greenhouse, which had somehow led to his leading an informal seminar on how to effectively build a greenhouse, which Jester and Nott had not asked for but didn’t stop because who knew? It might come in handy someday. At any rate, Jester’s information about Caduceus’s man was scarce and she’d do anything for more, and knowing Nott, she’d continue to keep the secret even after meeting him just to ruin Jester’s life. It was SO unfair. Nott didn’t even LIKE spikeball. The only “sport” she enjoyed was Wii Bowling, for some unfathomable reason.

“Well, I’m here now, so you can go home if you want,” Jester told Calianna, trying not to visibly pout. The idea of sitting here at the desk by herself for hours sounded about as appealing as playing Wii Bowling with Nott. (She managed to cheat? Somehow?)

Calianna frowned sympathetically even as she pulled her purple employee shirt over her head, revealing her Overwatch hoodie underneath. “If you want I can stay and hang out a little longer to keep you company. I bet I can even get the boss to pay me overtime by saying we needed extra staff because we were so swamped!”

Jester giggled, hopping up onto and over the counter even though she could very easily just walk around like a normal person. “Do you think anyone would believe that?”

“We could say there’s a promotion going on at the smoothie bar and it drew crowds. Nobody would ever verify that!”

They both peered down the hall at the smoothie bar, where the manager glared at them as he washed a cannister. None of the gym employees knew his name so they always called him the gentleman because of his elegant yet indefinably creepy aura. Both girls ducked away so he couldn’t see them, snickering uncontrollably.

“Oh, hey! I almost forgot!” Calianna rummaged in the pockets of her hoodie, which were perpetually bulging with dozens of scraps of paper and other miscellaneous items like lip balm, cheap pens, and loose keychains.

Triumphantly, she yanked a blue Post-it into view and held it out to Jester. Jester’s brow furrowed. “What is this, Cali?”

“It’s for you! Read it!”

Jester snatched it out of Calianna’s hand, smoothing the paper out so she could see the message properly. Clearing her throat, she began to read out loud. “Hi Jester, I came by the gym today and I was sad I didn’t see you. Anyway, I wanted to give you my phone number. It’s two zero six…. Aaahhh!” This was the point at which Jester lost control of her ability to prevent herself from jumping up and down and squealing ecstatically. Calianna laughed and crouched under the swivel chair so she wouldn’t accidentally get whacked with one of her co-worker’s flailing arms.

“It’s from Beau, isn’t it?” Jester practically shouted.

“Can you keep it down over there?” the gentleman called irritably from the smoothie bar.

“Sorry!” the girls both chorused.

Calianna grinned conspiratorially. “Yeah, it is! She came to work out during my shift! She looked, like, super sad that you weren’t there when she walked in, and she left the note on her way out! You’re right, by the way – she’s really hot!”

“Isn’t she?” Jester got so excited that she started screaming again, which prompted a loud, annoyed groan from the gentleman.

Calianna almost fell over laughing. “Don’t forget to actually add her number!”

“I won’t!” Jester yelled, crumpling up the note and shoving it in her pocket.

(She did forget, but only because as soon as she got home from work she got extremely wrapped up in fruitlessly interrogating Nott about Caduceus’s boyfriend.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> haha calianna swamp pun


	11. Chapter 11

“Oh, come on, you brought flowers too? Who are yours even for?” Beau groaned. Perhaps a bit melodramatically. But she was in a Mood.

Caleb raised an unimpressed eyebrow. As unimpressed as he was with her, she was reluctantly forced to admit that she was rather impressed with him. He’d combed his hair for once and put on a shirt-and-sweater combo that achieved the look of “stylish history professor” rather than his usual “frumpy history professor” and he’d actually bothered to wear contacts instead of glasses, although that last part would probably be a mild disappointment to Molly.

He held up his red-and-blue-and-violet bouquet, looking exceedingly awkward standing in the yellowy light of the theater building entrance hall. “They’re for Molly. Who are yours for?”

Beau performed an exaggerated jaw-drop. Caleb glared at her. “For MOLLY? What –”

“Be quiet, you’re embarrassing both of us,” he hissed, glancing around at the other people in line, who were giving them weird looks.

“Oh come on, Caleb, it’s the theater building, they should be used to people being unnecessarily loud in here,” Beau scoffed. “And if you’re really trying to impress Molly, you should’ve worn the glasses. He likes them.”

“What – really? He finds bad eyesight… attractive?”

Beau shrugged. “Look, I don’t understand any better than you do, pal.”

Caleb gestured at her own nearly matching red-and-blue-and-violet bouquet. “You still haven’t answered my original question, by the way.”

Beau sighed. “These are for Molly, too. I think we got them from the same grocery store.”

They held them up next to each other. They were indeed very similar, although Beau didn’t know enough about botany to actually assess whether they comprised the same types of flowers. Then again, Molly probably didn’t either. Caleb hummed doubtfully. “Do you think he’ll care?”

“Buddy, I think he’ll be so excited that YOU showed up to his dumb theater show that he probably wouldn’t give a fuck if you brought him skunk cabbage.”

Caleb’s cheeks reddened slightly and Beau grinned. “So you don’t think he’ll be put out about the glasses, then?”

“Nah, I was just messing with you.”

“I mean, I guess I should have figured. I was more asking about whether he’ll care that we both got him practically the same bouquet.”

“No, he’ll probably think it’s funny.”

Their conversation drifted off as they reached the ticket desk. Soon after, they found their seats in the auditorium and waited for Molly’s show to begin.

It was a collection of short skits and a few comedic monologues and interpretive dances cobbled together into something resembling a variety show, mainly intended to showcase the talent of the theater program’s star students. Which included Molly. Supposedly. In Beau’s opinion, the jury was still out on that one.

As biased as she was by their sibling-esque mutual mockery, Beau had to admit that her roommate was a good performer. He was charming and funny and ostentatious and exceedingly loud and had a way of moving his body that managed to make slapstick look graceful. He could also (she begrudgingly allowed) wear the hell out of almost any piece of garbage he deigned to wrap around himself. Right now, he was onstage flaunting a piece that seemed suspiciously similar to the titular prop from their high school’s production of ‘Joseph’s Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat’, which had gone mysteriously missing after the final show.

“That fucker,” she muttered. She wondered how he’d managed to keep it hidden in their apartment all this time. Caleb, suitably enraptured by the performance, paid her no attention.

She tried to let Molly’s antics take her mind off her Mood. She’d been planning to ask out Jester today, but in all her excitement over finally making her key move, she’d forgotten that Jester wasn’t guaranteed to actually be present at the gym whenever Beau wanted her to be. She’d left her number with Jester’s friend, hoping she’d pass it along. So far she hadn’t received any texts from unknown contacts. Probably because giving a girl your number through a third party was a deeply lame move. It seemed increasingly clear that Beau had blown her chances, and she was trying not to let herself sink into a depressive quagmire about it.

A number of audience members clapped and whistled after Molly executed a flawless death-drop. Even Caleb was clapping, and Beau had never seen him clap for anything, even a speech from the dean of students. Beau clapped too.

She had no girlfriend, but that was just the status quo, and she could deal with it. She always had her friends. Molly briefly caught her eye and flashed a subtle wink. Then he noticed Caleb sitting next to her and subsequently stammered through the rest of his line. (Beau deeply regretted not catching it on video.)


	12. Chapter 12

“I can’t find Caleb!” Nott exclaimed, sounding increasingly distressed. She tried to peer around among the crowds flowing out of the theater building auditorium, but even on her tiptoes she wasn’t very tall.

Jester took pity on her. “Caduceus, do you see him anywhere?”

Caduceus gazed around above everyone else’s heads for a moment, and then faced his two friends, expression a mask of confusion. “I can’t remember what he looks like…”

“Why not? You’ve met him, like, ten times at least!” Nott whacked Caduceus’s thigh with her rolled-up program.

“Now, now, let’s not resort to violence,” Caduceus’s boyfriend – Fjord - chimed in. He was a beefy, athletic-looking guy, taller than Jester but still shorter than Caduceus (as were most people), fairly average-looking besides his punk-rock forest-green undercut. Jester had had no idea what kind of person she’d expected Caduceus to date, but it somehow hadn’t been him. She was brimming with questions to which Caduceus would probably never provide definitive answers. Why hadn’t Caduceus mentioned they were dating during any of the times they’d seen him working at Payaso Pizza? What did they do on their dates? How long had they known each other? Where had they met? Well, that one she sort of knew the answer to, because Caduceus had mentioned something about them running into each other at some kind of obscure eco-spiritual mother-goddess pagan church. But that brought up even more questions. What was Fjord doing there? She squinted at him. He looked far more likely to try out for the U.S. National Swim Team than to draw on the power of the divine feminine to conduct a psychic cleansing of an outdoor garden altar. Then again, you really never knew, did you?

At any rate, he was not very skilled at negotiating with Nott, especially when she was strung out over losing track of her best friend’s whereabouts. Apparently he’d mentioned that he was going to the theater department’s latest show and encouraged her to come along and bring friends, but the four of them had arrived late because Caduceus had no method of telling time besides the clocks in classrooms and he’d forgotten that he wouldn’t be in a classroom around the time they needed to leave for the show, and so by the time they’d finally found him (in the Quad, purely by chance) and arrived at the theater building, the show was underway and they couldn’t find where Caleb was sitting.

“Now, you listen here,” Nott began, glaring at Fjord in a way that clearly indicated she was about to go nuclear and just one word from him would set her off. He flashed Caduceus a slightly panicked glance, but Caduceus wasn’t paying attention, distracted by the fake ivy the stage crew had used to decorate the borders of the ticket windows.

This was not good. Jester had to figure something out before Nott tried to murder poor Fjord in the theater building entrance hall. Nobody deserved to die here!

Then, to her unimaginable relief, she noticed a familiar ginger head shining gold in the lamplight across the room. “CALEB!” she yelled, waving her arms ecstatically and standing on the toes of her platform shoes. A few people in the crowd shot her annoyed glances, which she thought was very rich of them, because this was the theater building, and if you couldn’t be loud here, where COULD you be loud?

Caleb turned in her direction, confused expression clearing when he noticed her. He looked more presentable than usual, she noted; he’d even shaved. As she advanced on him, pushing her way impatiently through the crowd, she noticed that he was standing next to Molly, who was holding a tasteful bouquet of flowers and looked like he’d just won the lottery and the Nobel Peace prize and seventeen Olympic gold medals all at the same time.

“Jester!” Molly called out excitedly, rushing towards her and planting a sound kiss on her cheek, which Caleb watched, mildly crestfallen. Molly turned to look back at him and blushed. “Oh. Um. I. Uh.” He darted back over and quickly kissed Caleb on the cheek, and then again on the other cheek for good measure. Jester giggled, even as Nott screeched “Who is that?” from somewhere below her shoulder.

And then Jester’s laughter died as she noticed Beau standing just past Caleb, fixing her with a wide-eyed deer-in-the-headlights stare.

Jester skipped over to her even as her stomach prickled with nerves. “Hi, Beau,” she trilled, stepping close enough that she had to tilt her head up just a bit to make eye contact with her. Beau hadn’t scrubbed up like Caleb had; she looked about the same as usual, complete with unzipped hoodie, athletic tank top, and joggers with stripes down the sides. But Jester was enamored, and she’d still be enamored if Beau had worn an assortment of trash bags and cardboard boxes. Actually, she’d probably be even more enamored – that sounded kind of interesting.

“Hi, Jester.” Beau glanced sheepishly down at her running shoes, which she shuffled awkwardly on the tiled floor. “Did you, uh… Did you get my note?”

Jester smacked herself on the forehead. “Oh! Yes, I did! I’m so sorry, I totally forgot to text you, I just got so wrapped up in other things, but I really wanted to, I promise, I swear –”

“It’s okay, don’t worry about it!” Beau cut her off, laughing slightly. She was smiling now, which Jester took as a good sign.

Jester smiled back, giving her another once-over. At which point she noticed – and she had no idea how she’d missed this before – that Beau herself was holding a bouquet off to one side. Jester gasped, smirking at Beau. “Beauuuuuuuuu… is that for ME, perhaps?”

Beau held it out, looking at it like she’d genuinely forgotten it existed until that moment. She cleared her throat. “Uh… Yes! Yeah, it is. For you. I mean.” She glanced up at Jester, mouth quirked in a very attractive half-smile. Jester barely contained her shriek of joy as she took it from Beau’s hand, bringing it up to her face to sniff.

“It’s beautiful! Thank you so much! How did you know I love flowers?”

“I, uh… Just a guess.” Beau grinned at her. “Anyway, so… I was wondering if… you’d maybe want to… go out with me sometime? Like. On a date. Romantically. A romantic date. With me.”

“BEAU!” Jester practically screamed. Beau leaned back a little, evidently winded by the sheer volume of Jester’s energy. “I’D LOVE TO!”

Beau positively beamed. Her face looked like it was going to split in two. Jester had never seen her smile this big before, and it was kind of amazing. She wanted to take a photo. “That’s so good, I –”

She was cut off as Jester planted a kiss on her mouth. Beau seemed surprised by this turn of events but she quickly reacted accordingly, putting one hand on Jester’s waist and the other on her cheek and tilting her head slightly to improve the angle.

Somewhere in the distance Nott was yelling something at Molly as Caleb attempted to placate her, but Jester could barely pay attention. She was floating miles above the clouds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading!! The final two chapters are just going to be short epilogue scenes and I'll post them both sometime in the next week if all goes according to plan (I'm in the process of moving right now so things are a little up in the air)! Have a great week!


	13. Chapter 13

“Hi there! How can I help you today, ma’am?” Jester trilled brightly from behind the reception desk.

“Don’t you ‘ma’am’ me,” Beau snorted, lightly flicking her on the forehead.

“But I’m just so well suited to customer service!”

Beau smiled sweetly and flipped her off. Ever since she and Fjord had gotten their quarterly work reviews, all their friends had been teasing them relentlessly about how they were both “not well suited to customer service”. (To be fair, it wasn’t entirely incorrect.)

Jester pretended to gasp in horror. “Well, I never! How dare you treat me in such a manner in my own gym?”

Beau leaned her elbows on the desk, using one hand to tuck a loose lock of hair behind Jester’s ear. “Well, you coerced me into signing an unnecessary form in this gym, so don’t act all innocent.”

Jester smirked. “Well, you were lying to me about wanting a soccer ball, sooooooo.”

“Well, if you’re still butt hurt about that, how about I make it up to you?”

Jester arched an eyebrow. “Oh? And what do you propose, Beau?”

“You, me, ice cream, Tusk Love, lots of blankets.”

There was a scraping sound as Jester nearly fell out of her chair in excitement. “I thought you hated Tusk Love!”

Letting out a deeply world-weary sigh, Beau admitted, “I do, but I want to sit next to you and make out with you during the romantic scenes, so.”

“We can’t make out during the romantic scenes, Beau! We’ll miss all the important character development!”

Beau rolled her eyes. “Yeah, all the important character development.”

Jester smoothed her skirt primly. “We can make out afterwards, for as long as we want!”

“Okay, deal.” Beau leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. “Now I actually gotta work out, so I’ll talk to you later. And no ogling me from the doorway this time! Calianna got pissed at me the other day because apparently she had to cover for you the whole time I was here.”

“Uuugggggghhhhhh, fine.” Jester pouted, and Beau kissed her again.

The sun shone through the massive glass panes around the lobby entrance. It was spring now. Life was good.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> teensy one :)

Molly never got over the flowers thing. Every single week after the fateful theater show, he left a Post-it note on Beau’s door with a drawing of a bouquet and a sad face, or sometimes a little message like “Please pick up milk from the grocery store, and actually give it to me and not your girlfriend!” Eventually Beau started randomly bringing Molly’s grocery requests to Jester out of spite. And then Molly would complain about it to Caleb and convince him to “punish” Beau by refusing to let her use his phone charger or borrow his pens or drink from his thermos during their classes (she was the kind of person who brought less than the bare minimum in her backpack at all times). None of them were actually mad at each other, though; they were all the happiest they’d been all year.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you SO much for reading!!! If you enjoyed this, you might also like my other critrole fic, which can be found on my profile! I hope you have a happy holiday season and an amazing new year <3

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from the song "clementine" by Halsey, which makes me think of Jester. Thank you for reading!


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